French and Thin: Beans, That Is

Mireille Guiliano's 2005 book "French Women Don't Get Fat" solved the great mystery once and for all. Those savvy ladies stay slender because they eat everything they love and savor every bite. They are not afraid of wine, chocolate, butter and cream. But they do practice restraint. One suspects that if they were to binge on doughnuts, they'd pudge up just like everybody else.

The French also eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, and even these tend to be petite. Think of tiny peas (petit pois), four-inch squash (courgettes) and filet beans as thin as linguini. So here's a question: Do such gems naturally grow small? If you plant skinny little beans, will they stay that way on the vine? Any gardener who has ever tried growing them knows the answer is "non." If you do not pick them regularly, they turn big and tough. The crop requires more self-discipline than a trip to the patisserie.

So what makes a bean a filet variety, I wondered. To find out, I phoned a few people in the seed business. Lance Frazon of John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds explained that certain old bean varieties tasted best when they are small and picked before tough strings developed. Modern filets such as Nickel, on the other hand, are not only stringless but are bred to stay thin longer, largely by reducing the size of the seeds. This trait gives you a bit more leeway at picking time. Like bush beans in general, they tend to all come in at once, though, so there is still an intense period of harvesting and feasting. He recommends sowing them frequently throughout the summer.

Steve Bellavia of Johnny's Selected Seeds also sells modern varieties of stringless filets, but he wishes someone would come up with a pole version that would bear for a longer stretch. Bush beans, with their concentrated set, favor commercial growers who harvest the whole crop mechanically, all at once, and home cooks who can and freeze. But filets aren't especially good for freezing. He suggests growing Fortex, a pole bean that tastes good when picked thin.

Because I had some Fortex in the garden, I put it to the test. The ones I tried at one-eighth of an inch wide were tasteless, but at a quarter-inch they were flavorful and sweet. I steamed them briefly along with some just-picked peas and sliced baby zucchini. With a glass of cold white wine and a dish of strawberries, they made a perfect light supper for a summer night. That's strawberries with cream, of course. And beans with butter.